Plenty

It's a delicacy to come home to a government-made meal

Of debt collectors and voicemails from the friendly lady

Who keeps offering, offering, offering to cut my arm off

In exchange for a penny, pebbles, and a rusted Coke can.

Tastes so fucking good to sink my teeth into the propaganda.

'Designed with you in mind,' is truer than I used to think.

Pop a pill to keep the spam away because the message is more

Important than the messenger and the discomfort combined.

They want me here, plastered to the pleather couch, trapped.

And I want to be here, swiping through uncanny faces,

Looking for something real enough to light a spark of life

Inside the hallways of my brain (what's left of it at least).

It doesn't scratch the itch.

That's not surprising though, is it, since they planted their

Invisible seeds in my pores and have watered my skin for

Years waiting for the moment that I grow a little too itchy

And claw myself apart, bleed out in their front yards.

Or maybe I could buy something to turn the itch into a pain,

Then pick a little something up to dull the agony and then

All I'll have to deal with is regular old heartache and insomnia.

Plenty of pretty little pills for those things though; plenty, plenty.

Is pain easier to deal with than this unscratchable itch?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but sitting here in the glow of blue

TV screens and blue phones and blue fucking fridge screens

Isn't doing what they swore and promised it would.